Book Review : Dan Chaon - Ill Will (2017)
Telling a scary story is a difficult task. It requires giving enough information to your audience to understand context and withhold enough information for them to use their own fears to bridge the gaps in your storytelling. It’s even more difficult for a novel to be scary, because it is made out of pure information and * NOT * explaining something can sometimes lead to confusion. Dan Chaon’s novel Ill Will nailed that shit. I’m not sure if it’s any good, but it’s definitely fucking scary.
Ill Will tells the story of a psychologist named Dustin Tillman. When he was a child, Dustin’s parents and uncle were allegedly murdered by his adopted brother Rusty. The troublesome teenager was condemned to life in prison for what were believed to be occult ritual murders. Thirty years later, Rusty is exonerated based on DNA evidence and subsequently released, turning Dustin’s life upside down again. I know it sounds pretty telegraphic, but I assure you Ill Will is the furthest thing from that.
The possibilities and limits of fragmented storytelling
The main selling point of Ill Will is that it is delivered in a highly (like hiiiighly) fragmented narrative that goes forward-and-back in time and sometimes through dream of hallucination sequences. It’s more of an IKEA mystery with horror elements than a horror novel in itself. While it’s made pretty clear from the get-go that Rusty’s completely inoffensive, it raises the question: who the fuck killed Dustin’s parents then? That is where Ill Will and its lack of direct answer becomes pretty darn scary.
It will frustrate you for a good length of pages, but it does have a payoff. Once you’ll realize that you’ve ran out of options like one runs out of road but that Ill Will keeps on going like Wil E. Coyote over the ravine, you’ll be scared to look down too. To me, it almost made up for a problem that torpedoes a good chuck of my enjoyment: an unsympathetic, uninteresting and insincere protagonist. Chuck Palahniuk once said: you protagonist can be unsympathetic if he’s interesting. Dustin Tillman is neither.
There is absolutely no moral battle in this guy. He has checked the fuck out of his life. He is performing father and husband duties while falling under the spell of a client. He has no spine and surrendered control of everything. I know Dustin’s deal is that he is a broken human being, but it never makes you scared for him. Because no one’s scared for a psychological who doesn’t want to deal with his wife’s death and can’t bother to help his junkie son. No one cares for a self-centered douchebag.
The lack of interesting character is really what hurts Ill Will. The closest thing to someone to root for is Dustin’s junkie son Aaron, but even he doesn’t care much what happens to him. When everyone thinks the game is already played and behaves as such, there’s no stakes. Everyone’s preparing for the worst and pretty much the worst happens, so there’s no tension. Everyone gets what they want without having to struggle too much for it. So, the idea of Ill Will is more interesting that the novel itself.
But it’s pretty fucking scary nonetheless
Ill Will’s saving grace and what makes it worth remembering is its scariness. It all hinges on that one scene that redefines your entire reading experience. It’s a really cool payoff to an otherwise artsy and cerebral novel, but it’s going to rub a lot of readers the wrong way too… because the characters aren’t that cool to hang out with. No one feels particularly relatable. But I’m telling you right off the bat that Ill Will is a novel like this and that the payoff is very much worth it. It’s up to you if you’re up for 300 pages of mood setting.
A great horror novel would’ve made you afraid for a character in particular, but what makes Ill Will so unique is that it’ll make you question your own sense of reality. Inexplicable crimes will gain creepy undertones next time you read the news. Inoffensive people will suddenly seem off-putting. Normal occurrences will become suspicious to you. You will wear on your shoulders a latent sense of distrust for a couple days. Nothing about that book is conventional, but if you’re looking for that, it’s worth it.
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So, is Ill Will a good or a bad novel. I think it’s an attempt at a historically scary novel that didn’t quite lived up to its ambitions. It’s too bleak and monochromatic. It wholeheartedly qualifies as misery porn. But, if you slog through the grey, there is a pretty killer boogeyman at the end. So, it kind of saved itself from its own mediocrity. I can’t say in all fairness that it’s good either, but like all ambitious failures it is full of interesting ideas. But what do I know? It was extremely successful, so you might like it entirely.
